Posts Tagged ‘food production’

In late May 2011, Heinz Australia announced what it termed “productivity initiatives to accelerate future growth”. Translated, that meant it was shifting production from plants in Girgarre, Brisbane and Wagga Wagga to New Zealand – 344 jobs would disappear, including all 146 positions at Girgarre which would affect 600 in the Goulburn Valley.

This film captures the effort by farmers, workers and the community to establish a Cooperative Food Hub in the Valley.

In the 12 months since the Heinz announcement, the GV Food Cooperative project has:

Brought together expertise across the whole ‘paddock to plate’ food chain

Developed new food products based on consumer demand for local produce

Found a site for a new factory in Kyabram (20 km from Girgarre)

Organised the finances to get this started and is now seeking additional support so that it can be producing Australian Grown food products within the next 12 months.

If you are interested in supporting the GV Food Cooperative please click here.

Hidden environmental costs make food production more vulnerable than society has estimated and consumers should prepare for continuing rising food prices, a new report has shown. Lead author Kirsten Larsen, based at the University of Melbourne, says food production will be increasingly challenged by changing climate, dwindling supplies of cheap oil and declining water and soil resources. â€œWhat has become patently clear is that major innovations â€“ well beyond efficiency improvements in existing food production â€“ are needed, and soon, if we are to have good food to feed all Victorians and to meet export demands.â€ The report, Secure and Sustainable Food Systems for Victoria, produced by the Victorian Eco-Innovation Laboratory (VEIL) recommends actively developing more sustainable and resilient food systems now, to enable longer term food security in the face of rising input costs and environmental risks. The report can be downloaded from www.ecoinnovationlab.com/reportssubmissions. The media release and key findings can be downloaded from www.ecoinnovationlab.com/pages/press-releases.php.

As our market orientated way of life has reduced our everyday relations to the question of want and its satisfaction what we can do to address this impoverishment becomes pressing as the consequences of our rampant consumerism becomes increasingly apparent. Issues of environmental degradation and waste bear down on us with the imperative of a solution, one lightens ones ecological footprint in response, yet does such remedial action address the underlining cause of these maladies or do we rather conceal from ourselves meaningful change in gestures as we maintain the everyday relations that service our wants reduction? For we may reduce our consumption, localize its sourcing whilst still substantiating the continued impoverishment that enables the substitution of meaningful relations with things to go on unabated and so never address the underlining cause of our over consumption that is responsible for so much ecological damage. Growlocal is conceived with this in mind as it seeks to address the underlying cause of environmental issues by approaching them from the stand point of our everyday relations. By providing a search capability that enables people to find others whom not only share a passion for food but a commitment to social change, Growlocal hopes to be a means of facilitating the establishment of an economy that does not reduce our interaction with others to matters of want, but rather nurtures with the soil we attend to, a participatory culture of mutuality and sharing that is integral for an alternative future to become a working reality.